> All researchers must apply and present a researcher card, which may be obtained in Room 1000. This ensures that proper identification is on file for all individuals accessing the building to establish a legitimate business purpose. Abuse of any researcher registration to circumvent access by the general public may result in a trespass situation and a permanent ban from access to all NARA facilities.
What the hell does "legitimate business purpose" mean? What "business" need is there for JFK Assassination records (which I think are at this site), for example? If I'm getting a PHD or writing a book, is that a "business" need? I suspect not.
Also, "Abuse of any researcher registration to circumvent access by the general public may result in a trespass situation and a permanent ban from access to all NARA facilities" seems like a very poorly constructed sentence.
I've been to NARA 2 in College Park several times. I'm reading this as meaning that only researchers who will request records can enter the building now. The statement seems to be clumsily worded.
It suffices to say that it would be hard to justify closing down NARA 2 for researcher access. Room 2000 is the main reading room and it is one of the largest reading rooms I have ever been in. The building was built for people to come and visit and do research.
NARA 2 is a high security facility as it is. The last time that I visited was in 2019. You are searched one time upon entering the building. You (as a researcher) enter and go down to a large basement locker room where you can place most of your items in a locker. You can take a laptop and a scanner/camera to the first floor, get searched another time, then go up an elevator to the Room 2000, get searched again, and then take a seat and request materials (using triplicate forms, the last time I was there). You are searched again upon leaving the reading room.
Based on my experience, it sounds like they are going to remove one of the searches and put it at the entrance rather than at the elevators for the second floor, though I admit this is speculation.
The more difficult aspect would be having no parking access at the facility itself and having to take a bus there. I've taken the Metrobus to NARA 2 before and it was quite complicated the last time I went there, and I generally like public transportation. Every time I visited after that, I drove and parked in the garage, usually on the roof. That said, I can learn to manage the bus.
My partner works for NARA, but not in this office. Outside of the large amount of departures and RIF actions taken for the agency, there's lots of challenges regarding staffing for people who come in off the street and do not have succinct, coherent research questions. Staff are duty-bound to respond to all queries, regardless of how good they are.
I imagine this research card policy does two things:
1. Raises an easy bureaucratic barrier for people who just drop in and expect/demand help
2. Gives staff an opportunity to refuse access to people who may have non-research intent from accessing the building
It's likely the example you provided qualifies as a business need. They just don't want you hanging around and getting in the way of them helping people who scheduled a consultation, have an appointment, etc.
Totally agree on the poorly-constructed sentence. I wish they had said it more succinctly/precisely.
I believe you are interpreting “business need” as “commercial need” when I think it’s more like “what is your business here?” Purely anecdotal, but when I visited Moffett Federal Airfield to visit the aviation history museum there I asked the security guard at the gate checking my ID if I could ride my bike around the base afterwards. He said I needed a business purpose to being on the base and that visiting the museum was a business purpose but biking around aimlessly wasn’t.
The actual process of getting a research card does not mention any business need. It just asks to show ID and watch a training video:https://www.archives.gov/research/start/researcher-card. It specifically mentions student IDs.
But maybe that page is not updated yet with new policy.
It means if you are a crazy person, you can no longer waltz in off your motorcycle and demand all documents related to alien spacecraft held at Area 51 or the real unedited Zapruder film that clearly shows Walt Disney was the triggerman, etc.
My guess is anyone could still pursue whatever crazy theories they wanted, so long as they conducted their research legitimately, i.e., as a legitimate _process_ of research, with no value judgment on the topic or end goal.
> Also, "Abuse of any researcher registration to circumvent access by the general public may result in a trespass situation and a permanent ban from access to all NARA facilities" seems like a very poorly constructed sentence.
It means you'll be banned if you write anything negative about the dear leader and his eternal administration.
Looks like NARA are underfunded [1] and trying to grapple with how to prioritize digital transformation while still meeting KTLO demands. They closed three facilities last year. [2] The goal was/is to digitize everything to increase access to the archives for everyone.
The current administration reduced NARA funding and, in February, dismissed Shogan as "Archivist of the United States" but it appears a plan for a strategic shift was underway before those changes.
I have a researcher card, it's not an arduous process. The staff are very kind. When you show up to the National Archives in Washington, DC., prepare to encounter a general group of 2 dozen pros carrying scanners, laptops, etc. It's quite the experience.
I don't see this is that big of a deal. It's open, you can access it, but they are controlling more. Given the propensity for the theft and destruction of archives documents in the past, I'm ok with more security.
There are a significant number of digital scans available online. The problem is that they're only a tip of the iceberg of the available material, and digitizing records costs time and money (that apparently they don't have much of right now).
The smart move is to downsize the reading rooms and use the money for a high speed scanning team.
The scanning should focus on volume not accuracy or quality. If anyone needed that sort of thing, they could always go back to the original documents.
So many digitisation projects spend half their time perfecting metadata etc - which IMO is of far lower value than just getting the paper scanned and sorting the rest later.
Yes, they 100% do bring out unique archival records for you to review. It's one of the neat things about going to the facility!
Sometimes if there's a more extensive process to retrieve the record (i.e. your archivist has to talk to a different government entity or agency to get the information) you might get some facsimiles, but often the information is only captured in the physical document that you're looking at. Moreover, to reiterate my point from above, part of the reason that College Park is making this decision (probably) is because it takes time and coordination to get these documents, and they want to ensure that--with limited staff and resources--they're still able to fulfill their mission of providing access to information.
Most of the records that exist under NARA's purview are not backed up at all. There's a major initiative to digitize existing holdings, but that's challenging/fraught with staffing issues. It's basically an under- or un-funded mandate.
Can't speak for the US National Archives, but I do occasionally head to the National Archives of Australia to look at things that pique my interest, and I can confirm that yes, you can just ask for entire folders full of documents and in most cases, they'll take the originals and just plop them in a plastic tub for you to pick up and have a read through. It is a slightly strange feeling opening up a file and flicking through correspondence that was once personally handled by a Prime Minister from 100+ years ago. (They will use scanned copies for anything that either can't be handled for conservation reasons or has been redacted for security reasons.)
There are multiple 'National Archives' across the country: https://www.archives.gov/locations Looks like this only affects the one in College Park, MD.
I recently used this archive for a course paper and it only took 1-2 days of training and paperwork to get approved.
I don't strictly need this archive anymore, but I recall when the federal layoffs were first being announced that staff were down about it.
As a first-time archives user, this is a major loss to the research community. I met people who flew in from around the country for various projects, working on their graduate degrees and consulting here.
When I used the facilities, I saw signs in multiple areas about people who were caught stealing records and warnings that the consequences are significant (federal crime). But this action is senseless. Their security is very tight with scanning before entering, restrictions on materials and bags that can be brought upstairs, and people monitoring to ensure that special procedures are followed. These places are understaffed and underappreciated. Funding should increase for these national treasures.
Looks like they quietly took the message down. For posterity, it said:
> ⓘ Restricted-Access Federal Facility, Effective July 7, 2025
>
> Effective July 7, 2025, the National Archives at College Park, MD, will become a restricted-access federal facility with access only for visitors with a legitimate business need. It will no longer be open to the general public. Security officers will enforce these restrictions, and your cooperation is appreciated.
I appreciate analogous cases are often not helpful, but in the UK some institutions like the national library of scotland are so-called "copyright libraries" and they have always restricted access to people who register and declare an interest grounded in research, or some gatekeeping around legitemate need otherwise. In many instances the documents held in these institutions are both rare, and contextually unique. Like paleological holotypes their role is different to objects on display in museums and collections.
I also believe in the general public's right to see and access things which relate to government. I'm just trying to point out that whilst this probably is reactive to current affairs (cost management? risks? FUD?) there are reasons and situations outside the USA where this is normal, and I do not mean "has been normalised to disadvantage you" -I just mean that identifying who you are and why you want to do something isn't that unusual, in archive access.
> in the UK some institutions like the national library of scotland are so-called "copyright libraries" and they have always restricted access to people who register and declare an interest grounded in research
As an 8yo, I'd walk into the US Library of Congress alone and ask for rare books.
Until some random crazy person exercises the same right and destroys an irreplaceable rare book.
You have to get a library card for the library. I don’t see why there is so much outrage over this, and I think the timing is more about budget cuts than about Trump [caveat- firing the archivist might have been personal].
I find the arguments that “he just wants to sow distrust” etc. are completely unbelievable; he has bigger fish to fry than micromanaging the national archives.
When I went to the Library of Congress, I'm pretty sure they made me get a card before I could enter the reading room (you can look into it from the main tourist-y area, but to actually get where the books are is different).
> Until some random crazy person exercises the same right and destroys an irreplaceable rare book.
In considering the LOC's multi-century existence, this parade of horribles never manifested as a meaningful risk. It remains limited to select imaginations.
Until the last decade, we didn't have crazy (or ideologically radical to the point of craziness) people going into museums and throwing liquids on priceless paintings. We don't live in a high-trust world anymore.
Having been a Jan 6 juror, it is sadly all too easy for me to believe a parade of horribles could be showing up now at this NARA facility, especially with all the JFK docs. In the hours of video footage I watched, hardly five minutes would pass without some Jan 6ers swapping their favorite YouTube conspiracy channels. It wouldn’t take more than a few monopolizing staff to act as a denial of service against the core mission.
> You have to get a library card for the library. I don’t see why there is so much outrage over this
Why do they need a "legitimate business need" to access the material? Why aren't they instead requiring a simple library card and/or identification.
That's why people are upset. This is more than just requiring a library card.
> Until some random crazy person exercises the same right and destroys an irreplaceable rare book.
Every library I've been in with rare books requires supervision by the archivist if you want to browse them. Sometimes only the archivist can handle the book.
The fact that these rare books aren't all being destroyed in mass tells me that this system works pretty well at screening crazy people from destroying books (and, frankly, there's not a whole lot of people dedicated to destroying rare books).
> Every library I've been in with rare books requires supervision by the archivist if you want to browse them. Sometimes only the archivist can handle the book.
Sure. The LOC librarians never seemed to be out of sight from 8yo me. And they were always happy to get what I asked for. It was a reasonable, functional arrangement.
Why surprised? Didn't US taxpayers pay for the collection of all this information? Now only those with "legitimate" interest can get access? I would very much like to know what the reasoning behind this move is. Although I suspect that as per usual, a reason will not be forthcoming. But who knows, perhaps the Epstein files are now being kept there, LOL?
I dislike the fact that people are so hostile to the idea of public goods/services/places. It's really sad that free access to information is something anyone would find crazy or objectionable.
I'm not at all hostile to "at no charge" access, in fact I fully support it and would be much more upset if the article had been "US Archives decides to charge $100 entry fee" than I was about the actual article "US Archives won't let you in until you register and show ID and give some plausible reason why you need to look at specific things".
I am pretty skeptical of "let random people touch difficult to replace things when you don't know who they are".
Overloading of the word "free" here. Contextually you might be meaning anonymous, unannounced, no justification required. Only anonimity would be harmed by requiring ID and in the case of at risk manuscripts, one of a kind, holograph works of significant value, I could see reasons to say "we have a booking system"
are you being reductionist on this, and "demanding" that unconstrained access exist as a norm?
I don't find identified purposeful access objectionable. I am concerned at the amount of degredation to works from constant public access to them: its a thing in european museums, cultural exhibits, lasceaux..
I agree, requiring ID and even appointments is something that isn't objectionable. The issue I have is requiring a justification. Who approves or dismisses justifications? What's considered an invalid justification?
Unconstrained access isn't what I'm talking about, unjustified access is.
Not to be confused with the National Archives _Museum_, where you can still readily visit to see important documents such as the declaration of independence.
Who knows, why should they feel obligated to supply any kind of rationale for their actions? [edit: /s]Here is the sum total of detail they have provided: “ All researchers must apply and present a researcher card, which may be obtained in Room 1000. This ensures that proper identification is on file for all individuals accessing the building to establish a legitimate business purpose. Abuse of any researcher registration to circumvent access by the general public may result in a trespass situation and a permanent ban from access to all NARA facilities.”
Every aspect of government should provide the public with rationale for its actions unless providing that rationale is an actual threat to national security or an individual's freedoms. And any time they can't provide rationale for those reasons, an independent agency should review them confidentially. You can't have government by the people, for the people, of the people without accountability.
This is the sort of bureaucratic nonsense people actually rail against.
You're assuming you'd get something truthful or informative out of that process, when in reality you'll get the opposite due to the inherit (dis)incentives.
Right, I guess we should throw up our hands and let the dictator of the week run things as he sees, with no oversight.
If it meaningfully impacts the public, the public should have input. The input doesn't need to be binding, but it needs to be taken into consideration. Representative government is not a once-every-four-years exercise, nor is it something that should only be accessible to the mega-rich.
There's an entire process for this among many rule-making agencies in every level of government, across the world. It serves as, at minimum, a public record of objections and concerns, and at times that public feedback identifies a problem that the rule-drafters failed to address.
It doesn't, and can't prevent outright malice by a capricious autocrat, who only works to make his backroom friends happy. But it does make a public record of that malice.
If you keep no records, require no process, then how do you even identify if corruption is taking place?
The entire reason with we have say, double-entry book-keeping, is because it makes it substantially more difficult to engage in corrupt activities without producing a record which can be used to hold people to account for their actions.
People declare "I think it's corruption" on the internet all the time with absolutely no evidence, which itself is indistinguishable to corruption in the first place (since the favorite tool of dictators and autocrats is to "discover" corruption in their political opponents when it is convenient to do so).
I think if you take the view of "they just want to shut down the central government" you'll get answers to why they are doing things.
The first step in killing the national archive is making it worthless. Adding extra stupid barriers to access data helps with that goal. The harder it is to use, the more likely a Coca-cola archive sponsored by taco bell will be able to compete.
I dunno. I'm very much not a Trump fan, but I don't see how restricting access to "national information" would help him. And if it would, how does restricting access to one of them help him?
I could more see this as being just random action without any real purpose, or aimed at petty revenge on someone, or something.
Everything they do is meant to sew mistrust. It doesn’t need to have any other benefit. I don’t think they are trying to hide anything, and I don’t think this is about staffing - they just want to wreck government and your trust in it.
You're assuming competence. They are simply not giving a flying s**t about many things, break stuff and cause chaos somewhere else (Chesterton's Fence applies), cut funding, and affected agencies now have to deal with it.
Who in their right mind ever assumed anything about the Trump administration was competent? You don't need to be competent to break things on purpose out of spite and malice and hate. That's easy!
These things create very subtle but definite opportunities for conflict. And conflict can be twisted very easily by media organizations.
Even if only four researchers out of a hundred or thousand who visit every year complain, if that complaint is caught on camara we have a "Liberal Karen exploiting and abusing federal employees just trying to do their jobs. Why can't she go through the approval process like everyone else?".
And maybe that woman just wanted to research, not be exploited to increase protection for federal services. Maybe she just wanted transparent processes for helping those employees and a public who respected those dedicated public sector workers who help us navigate the system.
Because increased funding for protection of federal workers by that kind of drama scenario does create conservative or authoritarian momentum. Even if it's not reflected as that affiliation on voting cards, it's a deep mindset.
I know in a dozen years the Karen stereotype will be seen as the sexist trope it is. But sometimes we create these feedback systems, inadvertently or purposefully, that reinforce those tropes.
I can see situations where there maybe someone considered a "Left" leaning PhD researcher may have access revoked due to lack of "business purposes". Can't have those pesky progressives looking up inconvenient facts.
> I could more see this as being just random action without any real purpose, or aimed at petty revenge on someone, or something.
This was essentially my first point, and I think we are in agreement.
> I dunno. I'm very much not a Trump fan, but I don't see how restricting access to "national information" would help him. And if it would, how does restricting access to one of them help him?
I did not intend to claim that the closure necessarily helps Trump himself. My point was that reducing access to public information (either wholesale, or by placing additional hurdles) hurts democracy and favors autocracy.
It doesn't need to 'help him', he is sufficiently motivated to do stuff for the simple reason that it hurts people he sees as enemies.
He has a record as long as his public life of being capricious, vindictive, and petty. This is ancient, settled history by this point, as clear as the sun rising in the East.
Remember that the Trump administration are active enemies of open inquiry, justice and accountability - and they have done a solid job illegally dismantling the federal government due to extremist ideology.
If an organization is a source of inconvenient truth to a ruler, or serves the public without a profit motive, it will be ruined by this administration.
TBF the College Parks location is by far the most important one; the most visited one; and the one that holds the most interesting stuff. Never met anyone who went to the Kansas one or whatever
Proof by counter example: I've been to NARA II at College Park dozens of times, researching and writing various papers or games I have worked on as side projects. So for example I did a lot of research on WW2 era naval damage control for a video game I was working on that never actually got out of the prototype stage.
Depending on exactly how this is enforced it could be nothing or could be a big deal. It depends entirely on how much you trust the people who will be setting and enforcing the policies, and right now there have been a lot of withdrawals and very few deposits into the organizational trust of the US Government supply.
sounds like a business purpose to me, and also, how much do you want to bet if you were to do that today, you'd find all the naval damage control information on chatgpt.
no, but you have two avenues - you have a business purpose and for what you were building, a video game, could probably be best approximated through chatgpt.
If you're a historian writing a non-fiction book, then visit the fucking archives.
the point I'm making is that everyone is making this a thing, when it is not.
This is classic TDS. Everyone is attributing everything wrong with anything to Trump, his administration. And it's just insane.
The point of the video game was to have a better model for naval damage control than the classic, Star Trek-style "10% damage" that you normally see in naval games. To do that I wanted to model actual WW2 ships, room by room, with the free-surface effect, meta-centric height, etc. respected, and then put you into the role of a DC officer on a ship that was attacked in various scenarios.
That level of detail is impossible to get without these primary sources- and the only people who would be interested in a game like this would be the ones for whom that accuracy is a selling point.
This is just one of my side projects, but it is one that shows the wide variety of projects that NARA II supported, beyond just historians.
From the site:
> All researchers must apply and present a researcher card, which may be obtained in Room 1000. This ensures that proper identification is on file for all individuals accessing the building to establish a legitimate business purpose. Abuse of any researcher registration to circumvent access by the general public may result in a trespass situation and a permanent ban from access to all NARA facilities.
What the hell does "legitimate business purpose" mean? What "business" need is there for JFK Assassination records (which I think are at this site), for example? If I'm getting a PHD or writing a book, is that a "business" need? I suspect not.
Also, "Abuse of any researcher registration to circumvent access by the general public may result in a trespass situation and a permanent ban from access to all NARA facilities" seems like a very poorly constructed sentence.
I've been to NARA 2 in College Park several times. I'm reading this as meaning that only researchers who will request records can enter the building now. The statement seems to be clumsily worded.
It suffices to say that it would be hard to justify closing down NARA 2 for researcher access. Room 2000 is the main reading room and it is one of the largest reading rooms I have ever been in. The building was built for people to come and visit and do research.
NARA 2 is a high security facility as it is. The last time that I visited was in 2019. You are searched one time upon entering the building. You (as a researcher) enter and go down to a large basement locker room where you can place most of your items in a locker. You can take a laptop and a scanner/camera to the first floor, get searched another time, then go up an elevator to the Room 2000, get searched again, and then take a seat and request materials (using triplicate forms, the last time I was there). You are searched again upon leaving the reading room.
Based on my experience, it sounds like they are going to remove one of the searches and put it at the entrance rather than at the elevators for the second floor, though I admit this is speculation.
The more difficult aspect would be having no parking access at the facility itself and having to take a bus there. I've taken the Metrobus to NARA 2 before and it was quite complicated the last time I went there, and I generally like public transportation. Every time I visited after that, I drove and parked in the garage, usually on the roof. That said, I can learn to manage the bus.
My partner works for NARA, but not in this office. Outside of the large amount of departures and RIF actions taken for the agency, there's lots of challenges regarding staffing for people who come in off the street and do not have succinct, coherent research questions. Staff are duty-bound to respond to all queries, regardless of how good they are.
I imagine this research card policy does two things:
1. Raises an easy bureaucratic barrier for people who just drop in and expect/demand help
2. Gives staff an opportunity to refuse access to people who may have non-research intent from accessing the building
It's likely the example you provided qualifies as a business need. They just don't want you hanging around and getting in the way of them helping people who scheduled a consultation, have an appointment, etc.
Totally agree on the poorly-constructed sentence. I wish they had said it more succinctly/precisely.
I believe you are interpreting “business need” as “commercial need” when I think it’s more like “what is your business here?” Purely anecdotal, but when I visited Moffett Federal Airfield to visit the aviation history museum there I asked the security guard at the gate checking my ID if I could ride my bike around the base afterwards. He said I needed a business purpose to being on the base and that visiting the museum was a business purpose but biking around aimlessly wasn’t.
The actual process of getting a research card does not mention any business need. It just asks to show ID and watch a training video:https://www.archives.gov/research/start/researcher-card. It specifically mentions student IDs.
But maybe that page is not updated yet with new policy.
It means if you are a crazy person, you can no longer waltz in off your motorcycle and demand all documents related to alien spacecraft held at Area 51 or the real unedited Zapruder film that clearly shows Walt Disney was the triggerman, etc.
My guess is anyone could still pursue whatever crazy theories they wanted, so long as they conducted their research legitimately, i.e., as a legitimate _process_ of research, with no value judgment on the topic or end goal.
How do you estimate they will judge process legitimacy?
Probably by if you're cooperative and lucid enough to file the papers ahead of time and schedule your visit.
> Also, "Abuse of any researcher registration to circumvent access by the general public may result in a trespass situation and a permanent ban from access to all NARA facilities" seems like a very poorly constructed sentence.
It means you'll be banned if you write anything negative about the dear leader and his eternal administration.
While the sentence is poorly constructed, it clearly doesn't mean that.
[flagged]
Oh the covid lockdowns were fascist now?
Looks like NARA are underfunded [1] and trying to grapple with how to prioritize digital transformation while still meeting KTLO demands. They closed three facilities last year. [2] The goal was/is to digitize everything to increase access to the archives for everyone.
The current administration reduced NARA funding and, in February, dismissed Shogan as "Archivist of the United States" but it appears a plan for a strategic shift was underway before those changes.
1: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/foia-audit/foia/2024-03-15/us-nati...
2: https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2024/nr24-37
> KTLO
Keep The Lights On?
yes
Seriously? James Joyce everyone
W-hat?
I have a researcher card, it's not an arduous process. The staff are very kind. When you show up to the National Archives in Washington, DC., prepare to encounter a general group of 2 dozen pros carrying scanners, laptops, etc. It's quite the experience.
I don't see this is that big of a deal. It's open, you can access it, but they are controlling more. Given the propensity for the theft and destruction of archives documents in the past, I'm ok with more security.
I want more lockdown of the original documents (put them in a cave somewhere), but more openness of digital scans.
Please just make a huge torrent and let everyone take a look.
There are a significant number of digital scans available online. The problem is that they're only a tip of the iceberg of the available material, and digitizing records costs time and money (that apparently they don't have much of right now).
The smart move is to downsize the reading rooms and use the money for a high speed scanning team.
The scanning should focus on volume not accuracy or quality. If anyone needed that sort of thing, they could always go back to the original documents.
So many digitisation projects spend half their time perfecting metadata etc - which IMO is of far lower value than just getting the paper scanned and sorting the rest later.
Indeed, the archive has cavernous branches, in the literal sense you desire.
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/spring/h...
Or they plan to destroy more and not have people see them doing it.
Do they actually bring out unique archival records for the general public?
I thought it was always backed up stuff.
If not, even assuming a 0.1% rate of scroundels over time that must mean thousands of records have been destroyed or stolen or tampered with…
Yes, they 100% do bring out unique archival records for you to review. It's one of the neat things about going to the facility!
Sometimes if there's a more extensive process to retrieve the record (i.e. your archivist has to talk to a different government entity or agency to get the information) you might get some facsimiles, but often the information is only captured in the physical document that you're looking at. Moreover, to reiterate my point from above, part of the reason that College Park is making this decision (probably) is because it takes time and coordination to get these documents, and they want to ensure that--with limited staff and resources--they're still able to fulfill their mission of providing access to information.
Most of the records that exist under NARA's purview are not backed up at all. There's a major initiative to digitize existing holdings, but that's challenging/fraught with staffing issues. It's basically an under- or un-funded mandate.
If you're interested, there's been a fair amount of theft throughout the history of the agency, and they actually maintain a page on it: https://www.archives.gov/research/recover/notable-thefts.htm...
Can't speak for the US National Archives, but I do occasionally head to the National Archives of Australia to look at things that pique my interest, and I can confirm that yes, you can just ask for entire folders full of documents and in most cases, they'll take the originals and just plop them in a plastic tub for you to pick up and have a read through. It is a slightly strange feeling opening up a file and flicking through correspondence that was once personally handled by a Prime Minister from 100+ years ago. (They will use scanned copies for anything that either can't be handled for conservation reasons or has been redacted for security reasons.)
This is about "the National Archives at College Park, MD". That's one of quite a few facilities they operate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Archives_at_College...
It's actually their "main" one.
There are multiple 'National Archives' across the country: https://www.archives.gov/locations Looks like this only affects the one in College Park, MD.
Or this is the first.
On display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”.
I recently used this archive for a course paper and it only took 1-2 days of training and paperwork to get approved.
I don't strictly need this archive anymore, but I recall when the federal layoffs were first being announced that staff were down about it.
As a first-time archives user, this is a major loss to the research community. I met people who flew in from around the country for various projects, working on their graduate degrees and consulting here.
When I used the facilities, I saw signs in multiple areas about people who were caught stealing records and warnings that the consequences are significant (federal crime). But this action is senseless. Their security is very tight with scanning before entering, restrictions on materials and bags that can be brought upstairs, and people monitoring to ensure that special procedures are followed. These places are understaffed and underappreciated. Funding should increase for these national treasures.
Looks like they quietly took the message down. For posterity, it said:
> ⓘ Restricted-Access Federal Facility, Effective July 7, 2025
>
> Effective July 7, 2025, the National Archives at College Park, MD, will become a restricted-access federal facility with access only for visitors with a legitimate business need. It will no longer be open to the general public. Security officers will enforce these restrictions, and your cooperation is appreciated.
I appreciate analogous cases are often not helpful, but in the UK some institutions like the national library of scotland are so-called "copyright libraries" and they have always restricted access to people who register and declare an interest grounded in research, or some gatekeeping around legitemate need otherwise. In many instances the documents held in these institutions are both rare, and contextually unique. Like paleological holotypes their role is different to objects on display in museums and collections.
I also believe in the general public's right to see and access things which relate to government. I'm just trying to point out that whilst this probably is reactive to current affairs (cost management? risks? FUD?) there are reasons and situations outside the USA where this is normal, and I do not mean "has been normalised to disadvantage you" -I just mean that identifying who you are and why you want to do something isn't that unusual, in archive access.
> in the UK some institutions like the national library of scotland are so-called "copyright libraries" and they have always restricted access to people who register and declare an interest grounded in research
As an 8yo, I'd walk into the US Library of Congress alone and ask for rare books.
I like this way best.
Until some random crazy person exercises the same right and destroys an irreplaceable rare book.
You have to get a library card for the library. I don’t see why there is so much outrage over this, and I think the timing is more about budget cuts than about Trump [caveat- firing the archivist might have been personal].
I find the arguments that “he just wants to sow distrust” etc. are completely unbelievable; he has bigger fish to fry than micromanaging the national archives.
> You have to get a library card for the library
No you don't. You only need a library card if you want to bring a book home. Anyone can read at the library.
When I went to the Library of Congress, I'm pretty sure they made me get a card before I could enter the reading room (you can look into it from the main tourist-y area, but to actually get where the books are is different).
> Until some random crazy person exercises the same right and destroys an irreplaceable rare book.
In considering the LOC's multi-century existence, this parade of horribles never manifested as a meaningful risk. It remains limited to select imaginations.
Until the last decade, we didn't have crazy (or ideologically radical to the point of craziness) people going into museums and throwing liquids on priceless paintings. We don't live in a high-trust world anymore.
Having been a Jan 6 juror, it is sadly all too easy for me to believe a parade of horribles could be showing up now at this NARA facility, especially with all the JFK docs. In the hours of video footage I watched, hardly five minutes would pass without some Jan 6ers swapping their favorite YouTube conspiracy channels. It wouldn’t take more than a few monopolizing staff to act as a denial of service against the core mission.
> You have to get a library card for the library. I don’t see why there is so much outrage over this
Why do they need a "legitimate business need" to access the material? Why aren't they instead requiring a simple library card and/or identification.
That's why people are upset. This is more than just requiring a library card.
> Until some random crazy person exercises the same right and destroys an irreplaceable rare book.
Every library I've been in with rare books requires supervision by the archivist if you want to browse them. Sometimes only the archivist can handle the book.
The fact that these rare books aren't all being destroyed in mass tells me that this system works pretty well at screening crazy people from destroying books (and, frankly, there's not a whole lot of people dedicated to destroying rare books).
> Every library I've been in with rare books requires supervision by the archivist if you want to browse them. Sometimes only the archivist can handle the book.
Sure. The LOC librarians never seemed to be out of sight from 8yo me. And they were always happy to get what I asked for. It was a reasonable, functional arrangement.
It's normal in the US too.. the Library of Congress has required it for certain collections for decades (that I know of):
https://www.loc.gov/research-centers/use-the-library/researc...
I was surprised when I saw this article and realized that until now anyone could just walk in off the street.
Why surprised? Didn't US taxpayers pay for the collection of all this information? Now only those with "legitimate" interest can get access? I would very much like to know what the reasoning behind this move is. Although I suspect that as per usual, a reason will not be forthcoming. But who knows, perhaps the Epstein files are now being kept there, LOL?
I dislike the fact that people are so hostile to the idea of public goods/services/places. It's really sad that free access to information is something anyone would find crazy or objectionable.
I'm not at all hostile to "at no charge" access, in fact I fully support it and would be much more upset if the article had been "US Archives decides to charge $100 entry fee" than I was about the actual article "US Archives won't let you in until you register and show ID and give some plausible reason why you need to look at specific things".
I am pretty skeptical of "let random people touch difficult to replace things when you don't know who they are".
Overloading of the word "free" here. Contextually you might be meaning anonymous, unannounced, no justification required. Only anonimity would be harmed by requiring ID and in the case of at risk manuscripts, one of a kind, holograph works of significant value, I could see reasons to say "we have a booking system"
are you being reductionist on this, and "demanding" that unconstrained access exist as a norm?
I don't find identified purposeful access objectionable. I am concerned at the amount of degredation to works from constant public access to them: its a thing in european museums, cultural exhibits, lasceaux..
> no justification required
That is the main thing I mean by free.
I agree, requiring ID and even appointments is something that isn't objectionable. The issue I have is requiring a justification. Who approves or dismisses justifications? What's considered an invalid justification?
Unconstrained access isn't what I'm talking about, unjustified access is.
I dislike it when all the normal, common, things this administration does is masqueraded as an egregious affront to freedoms and democracy
When the same energy should have either been applied to all the other administrations
Or only focus on the things that actually are unique
Everything is "unprecedented" when you don't know history.
Not to be confused with the National Archives _Museum_, where you can still readily visit to see important documents such as the declaration of independence.
It also requires special permission to access the Kremlin archives.
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From their orientation page:
Protect the holdings of the National Archives from theft, damage, misfiling, and inappropriate disclosure of information.
Who knows, why should they feel obligated to supply any kind of rationale for their actions? [edit: /s]Here is the sum total of detail they have provided: “ All researchers must apply and present a researcher card, which may be obtained in Room 1000. This ensures that proper identification is on file for all individuals accessing the building to establish a legitimate business purpose. Abuse of any researcher registration to circumvent access by the general public may result in a trespass situation and a permanent ban from access to all NARA facilities.”
Every aspect of government should provide the public with rationale for its actions unless providing that rationale is an actual threat to national security or an individual's freedoms. And any time they can't provide rationale for those reasons, an independent agency should review them confidentially. You can't have government by the people, for the people, of the people without accountability.
This is the sort of bureaucratic nonsense people actually rail against.
You're assuming you'd get something truthful or informative out of that process, when in reality you'll get the opposite due to the inherit (dis)incentives.
Right, I guess we should throw up our hands and let the dictator of the week run things as he sees, with no oversight.
If it meaningfully impacts the public, the public should have input. The input doesn't need to be binding, but it needs to be taken into consideration. Representative government is not a once-every-four-years exercise, nor is it something that should only be accessible to the mega-rich.
There's an entire process for this among many rule-making agencies in every level of government, across the world. It serves as, at minimum, a public record of objections and concerns, and at times that public feedback identifies a problem that the rule-drafters failed to address.
It doesn't, and can't prevent outright malice by a capricious autocrat, who only works to make his backroom friends happy. But it does make a public record of that malice.
there's no oversight needed when the government does a lot less
If there's no loose budget, there's far fewer things that go into the black budgets.
Your political opinions about which parts of government should exist are entirely off-topic to this question.
You know that the federal budget is set to grow enormously, right?
This is how Russia works. This is why the Russian government does what it does and why the people let it happen.
Because obviously nothing can ever change, so don't even try. How silly of of you citizen, to imagine even trying to fix corruption.
That's not what I'm talking about. It's the notion that if you get the corrupt to justify their actions that you'll somehow avoid corruption.
Fixing corruption involves people refusing to put up with corruption.
If you keep no records, require no process, then how do you even identify if corruption is taking place?
The entire reason with we have say, double-entry book-keeping, is because it makes it substantially more difficult to engage in corrupt activities without producing a record which can be used to hold people to account for their actions.
People declare "I think it's corruption" on the internet all the time with absolutely no evidence, which itself is indistinguishable to corruption in the first place (since the favorite tool of dictators and autocrats is to "discover" corruption in their political opponents when it is convenient to do so).
> why should they feel obligated to supply any kind of rationale for their actions?
because it is a public service that we are all funding. why would you think anything otherwise?
I keep forgetting what I think of as plainly facetious could be someone’s actual belief.
Yeah, I saw your edit. You can't use sarcasm on the internet anymore. How many downvotes did that cost you?
Sarcasm on the internet has always worked.
Staffing cuts, most likely: https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/06/trump-administrati...
How does adding a new bureaucratic vetting process in room 1000 make things more efficient? How does adding additional security, as stated, do that?
I think if you take the view of "they just want to shut down the central government" you'll get answers to why they are doing things.
The first step in killing the national archive is making it worthless. Adding extra stupid barriers to access data helps with that goal. The harder it is to use, the more likely a Coca-cola archive sponsored by taco bell will be able to compete.
Abandon all hope, ye who seek reflective reasoning from this government.
But my guess is that less public access to national information helps, and does not hinder, a speed-run to autocracy.
I dunno. I'm very much not a Trump fan, but I don't see how restricting access to "national information" would help him. And if it would, how does restricting access to one of them help him?
I could more see this as being just random action without any real purpose, or aimed at petty revenge on someone, or something.
Everything they do is meant to sew mistrust. It doesn’t need to have any other benefit. I don’t think they are trying to hide anything, and I don’t think this is about staffing - they just want to wreck government and your trust in it.
You're assuming competence. They are simply not giving a flying s**t about many things, break stuff and cause chaos somewhere else (Chesterton's Fence applies), cut funding, and affected agencies now have to deal with it.
Who in their right mind ever assumed anything about the Trump administration was competent? You don't need to be competent to break things on purpose out of spite and malice and hate. That's easy!
> they just want to wreck government and your trust in it.
... and eventually, privatize the wreckage or cut even more services because it's obviously "not working out".
These things create very subtle but definite opportunities for conflict. And conflict can be twisted very easily by media organizations.
Even if only four researchers out of a hundred or thousand who visit every year complain, if that complaint is caught on camara we have a "Liberal Karen exploiting and abusing federal employees just trying to do their jobs. Why can't she go through the approval process like everyone else?".
And maybe that woman just wanted to research, not be exploited to increase protection for federal services. Maybe she just wanted transparent processes for helping those employees and a public who respected those dedicated public sector workers who help us navigate the system.
Because increased funding for protection of federal workers by that kind of drama scenario does create conservative or authoritarian momentum. Even if it's not reflected as that affiliation on voting cards, it's a deep mindset.
I know in a dozen years the Karen stereotype will be seen as the sexist trope it is. But sometimes we create these feedback systems, inadvertently or purposefully, that reinforce those tropes.
I can see situations where there maybe someone considered a "Left" leaning PhD researcher may have access revoked due to lack of "business purposes". Can't have those pesky progressives looking up inconvenient facts.
More broadly, ignorance and stupidity amongst the general population benefit some politicians.
Taking your points in reverse order:
> I could more see this as being just random action without any real purpose, or aimed at petty revenge on someone, or something.
This was essentially my first point, and I think we are in agreement.
> I dunno. I'm very much not a Trump fan, but I don't see how restricting access to "national information" would help him. And if it would, how does restricting access to one of them help him?
I did not intend to claim that the closure necessarily helps Trump himself. My point was that reducing access to public information (either wholesale, or by placing additional hurdles) hurts democracy and favors autocracy.
It doesn't need to 'help him', he is sufficiently motivated to do stuff for the simple reason that it hurts people he sees as enemies.
He has a record as long as his public life of being capricious, vindictive, and petty. This is ancient, settled history by this point, as clear as the sun rising in the East.
Remember that the Trump administration are active enemies of open inquiry, justice and accountability - and they have done a solid job illegally dismantling the federal government due to extremist ideology.
If an organization is a source of inconvenient truth to a ruler, or serves the public without a profit motive, it will be ruined by this administration.
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So the administration can decide who gets to conduct research.
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Can we update the title to National Archives at College Park, MD to restrict public access starting July 7?
TBF the College Parks location is by far the most important one; the most visited one; and the one that holds the most interesting stuff. Never met anyone who went to the Kansas one or whatever
Updated to something similar to this, thanks!
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It's comical to me that anyone is complaining here because
a) everyone with a business purpose are the only ones going.
b) NO one on hacker news is ever going to go.
Proof by counter example: I've been to NARA II at College Park dozens of times, researching and writing various papers or games I have worked on as side projects. So for example I did a lot of research on WW2 era naval damage control for a video game I was working on that never actually got out of the prototype stage.
Depending on exactly how this is enforced it could be nothing or could be a big deal. It depends entirely on how much you trust the people who will be setting and enforcing the policies, and right now there have been a lot of withdrawals and very few deposits into the organizational trust of the US Government supply.
sounds like a business purpose to me, and also, how much do you want to bet if you were to do that today, you'd find all the naval damage control information on chatgpt.
So you think that ChatGPT is a substitute for primary source research?
no, but you have two avenues - you have a business purpose and for what you were building, a video game, could probably be best approximated through chatgpt.
If you're a historian writing a non-fiction book, then visit the fucking archives.
the point I'm making is that everyone is making this a thing, when it is not.
This is classic TDS. Everyone is attributing everything wrong with anything to Trump, his administration. And it's just insane.
The point of the video game was to have a better model for naval damage control than the classic, Star Trek-style "10% damage" that you normally see in naval games. To do that I wanted to model actual WW2 ships, room by room, with the free-surface effect, meta-centric height, etc. respected, and then put you into the role of a DC officer on a ship that was attacked in various scenarios.
That level of detail is impossible to get without these primary sources- and the only people who would be interested in a game like this would be the ones for whom that accuracy is a selling point.
This is just one of my side projects, but it is one that shows the wide variety of projects that NARA II supported, beyond just historians.